" 'Sposito? Are we drunk?" They were in a bar. Not as noisy as most of them, so conversation was possible.

The off-duty detective thought for awhile. "I don't see either of us driving, Castle, but if we were I'd have to arrest us." He tore his eyes away from the body on the other side of the room and glanced at his drinking partner. Castle had never looked so serious. "You look like somebody asked about the meaning of life."

"Nah," said Castle. "Been there, done that. 42." He seemed about to say more, so Esposito waited. He liked Castle. For a poor little rich boy he was good company, and he didn't give a damn who he was with as long as they were good company back. "Tell me it's a bad idea. Please?"

"Some of them are. Not all of them." Esposito decided one of them was drunker than he'd thought, since they had not been discussing ideas. Possibly T-shirts.

"Well, tell me this one definitely is."

"Not enough to go on."

"I don't think she likes me." There was a flock of women in the room, some attached, some not. Some of both sets had been looking them over. They had been looking back. They were alive, after all; it was never a bad thing to celebrate.

"Well, that's her problem, then. Isn't it?" Castle didn't respond. "Who, anyway? Spit it out, writer-boy."

"Well... Beckett." Castle winced.

"Oooh wow, bad, bad, BAD idea. Not good."

Castle's shoulders relaxed a trace and he took a pull on his nano-brew. "Thanks."

"Just for the record, where'd you even get an idea like that, about... her?"

Castle shrugged. "She's different."

"And therefore you kinda want her head on your wall?" Esposito was surprised to find how strongly his loyalties lay with his lieutenant.

"She's different... and therefore I really don't want her head on my wall. When did I come off as a big-game hunter to you?"

Esposito flapped his hand in the air. "Notches on your belt? Checkmarks in your address book? I don't know how you keep score."

"If you have to keep count, you're still a virgin. Besides, there are enough of my heads on women's walls. I kind don't want to think about it. If I were a girl I'd be a slut."

"But you're not, so you're a player."

"Which means I get played a lot."

"Well, Beckett's not like that. I mean, not a player or someone who would play you. Which would still be a player. But if you tried to play her, you'd be dead."

"So you're saying 'don't rock the boat?' "

"I'm begging. You're fun to have around, I don't want to watch it get ugly."

Castle looked amused. "You'd bet on her?"

"I'd bet there'd be bleeding on both sides, but you'd be the one missing body parts." And I'd be helping remove them, writer-boy.

""You've worked with her for what, a couple years? Does she even like men? Don't get me wrong--"

"I know, I know, we're all queer-friendly here." Esposito took a long swallow. "I wouldn't say she was looking very hard, no. I know of one boyfriend. Didn't meet him. He didn't last long, maybe six months, and I was never sure who dumped who. Whom. Look, we all worried what it'd be like having a lady cop for a boss, but she's a hell of a lot saner than any of the guys I've worked for. She works too much. Occupational hazard, lot of cops have trouble turning it off at night and going home."

"So? A lot of you don't?"

"Depends on what you mean by home. I come here a lot."

"But Beckett... she goes back to wherever she goes, wakes up on time, and goes to the gym... I know her work is deeply personal and all, but what would she be like if she weren't a cop?"

Esposito regarded Castle with disbelief. "She is a cop. I think she majored in criminal justice at NYU and signed up for the police academy the day after she graduated. It's like asking you who you'd be if you weren't rich."

"I haven't always been rich," Castle defended himself. "It felt like it, with my mother being an actress sometimes; we'd go to all these weird places and big fancy parties, but between gigs we were not rich. I've had to adapt."

"Done pretty well," Esposito observed skeptically.

"I've been lucky, my liver's holding out so far. And compared with some of Alexis's classmates, we're barely middle-class." Castle sipped. "So you don't think Beckett --"

"I am going to need another drink." Then I won't have the coordination to pound you into the sidewalk. Esposito signalled the barman, who actually saw him the first time. There were advantages to palling with the rich-and-famous.

Castle must have seen the look on his face. "Javier--?"

Maybe two drinks. "What?"

"I'n not planning to seduce and abandon her. Apart from having to answer to you and Ryan AND my daughter -- who thinks Beckett is Dana Scully and Buffy Summers rolled into one contemporary package – What I was saying was: she's different. In the first place, I don't think she's going to fall for my boyish good looks."

"You noticed that? Good, you're getting more observant."

"And in the second I don't know what I'd do if she did."

Esposito didn't believe that for a moment.

"I mean besides that," said Castle. "I mean like the next morning. Or the next week, if I took her away somewhere like the Bahamas. I'd want her to be happy, I mean I'd want a woman like her to be happy, and she plays it so close to the vest, I don't know where I'd begin. Please stop looking at me like I'm trying to see your sister naked."

"I'm used to watching her back," Esposito explained. "I'm used to trying to keep her from getting shot, and trying to make sure none of us gets blamed by higher-ups for something we should have done in a perfect world."

"There wouldn't be criminals in a perfect world."

"Yeah, well, write that one and see how it sells. Look, Castle, everybody's got issues. Hers don't keep her from being a good partner and a damn good cop, and I know THAT'S something that makes her happy." Esposito considered his relatively new friend and threw him a crumb. "Hell, you make her happy."

"I do?"

"Don't look so pleased to hear it. Yes. She likes solving cases. She doesn't mind being the go-to guy, um, girl, for weird ones. She'll even take help from mouthy civilians if they help her do her job better. Since you've been around things have been going well and she looks like she's breathing a little easier."

"I like that."

"I WILL cut you if I have to, you know."

ii. In another part of the city...

In another part of the city, Kate Beckett and Lanie Parish saw their friend into a cab. They turned to one another. "I don't know about you, girlfriend, but I need another drink." They went back into the restaurant.

The waitress smiled and gestured them back to the table where they'd been sitting a few minutes earlier. "Same thing, ladies?"

"Please," said Lanie. The drinks came. They drank the drinks.

"Listening to her doesn't make me feel bad that I'm not married," Kate said, breaking the silence.

"They're not all like that." Lanie shook her head, "She sure can pick 'em, though."

"But she doesn't do herself any good putting up with him. I can't see you or me giving him that many chances."

"I've been in love but never that blind, no. Maybe a little nearsighted."

Kate wrinkled her nose. "I'd never want someone I couldn't look at clearly. I'd rather meet someone who made me see better, like the opposite of beer goggles."

"At least in my job nobody's lying to me. Yours, I think... sometimes seeing all the hard edges right away isn't the best idea."

"Ha. I'd rather see them ahead of time, before I get any ideas."

"You have plenty of ideas. No man was ever born who could live up to them."

"Hey, my mom and dad did all right."

Lanie tried to be diplomatic. She had never met Kate's parents. "They probably did, and they did right by you. But, honey, part of doing right was -- I'm not saying they were pretending, but I know some mighty good parents in mighty bad shape who keep it off-stage. And some pretty normal ones with good enough marriages, who go through a patch now and then. You only see the train wrecks. It's not the best part of watching your parents get old, having them let you in on the real score, believe me. Maybe we'd be better off if we could have seen them get mad and get over it."

"Maybe they got it out of their system before I came along."

"I suppose that could happen. Nice if it worked." Lanie sipped her drink. It was good to see Kate this relaxed. Their mutual friend's troubles horrified her, of course, but her face was gentle. Time to poke a little. "So---- you should start working on that Castle soon, if you want kids before you're sixty."

The hyperbole worked, or the beneficent haze of Ketel One, because Kate's head remained a decent height above her shoulders. She only gave Lanie a little frown. "Please. Again? Do we have to?"

"Is it wrong to want you to have a rich, successful boyfriend? When he already looks at you like that?"

"Like what? Don't tell me, I don't want to know. And he may not be too thin but he is definitely too rich."

"At least you've looked at him, I wasn't sure."

"Actually, I take it back, 'too thin' is exactly what he is. I swear his characters have more to them than he does. Derek Storm could have him on toast."

"You haven't given him a chance; how can you say that?"

Kate pulled a look of insufferable superiority out of the depths of her soul and threw it in Castle's general direction. "He sleeps with his ex-wife, his interior decorator, and apparently most of the female half of the Social Register. These are not the considered acts of a mature person."

"Though probably typical of a divorced man, given the opportunities."

"They're all ditzes. Okay, maybe not the decorator, his place looks nice. But he hasn't taken anything seriously since I met him. It's all a puzzle to him, all plot twists."

"You said pretty nice things about his little girl," Lanie reminded her. "And from what you said about her mother -- she has to get it from somewhere."

"True. Maybe she's adopted. And not all that little: in three years she'll be part of the female half of the Social Register and God help the chinless wonders. But Castle seemed entirely at home at that charity event." Kate shuddered. "Until his mother auctioned him off, anyway."

"I'd have liked to see who won that."

"You won't have to wait long to find out, they'll be on page six. No, Lanie, he's just trying to figure out a way to make that detective he's writing tick, if he looks at me at all."

"Well, for somebody that shallow at least he's trying to do something hard."

"I know I'm going to hate her, too. Who he sees when he looks at me has nothing to do with who I am, no matter what kind of heartrending backstory he gives her."

Lanie considered that this was new. If Castle could give her friend some distance from her 'backstory' -- enough Kate could admit it was heartrending instead of tiptoeing all-too-carefully away from the pain -- then she would give his latest book to everyone on her Christmas list (regardless that her mother preferred a nice, solid biography). "So. You hate him because he sees everything as a literary device. And because he enjoys the money people--including you--give him for writing stories. And, what else?"

"Because he thinks he's so cute no one can refuse him and he doesn't ever drop it. I am so--VERY--tired of being twinkled at. If I ever twinkled back for real," she paused while both of them mentally reviewed her known instances of flirting in return, "he'd be off like a bunny."

"He does twinkle a lot," said Lanie. "Kind of a nice change from the glaring and the moping, but maybe it could get tiring. You really think he'd run if you looked back at him?"

"I am so not his type."

"You looked like it the other night."

"I was disguised as one of those empty-headed – high-heeled-- hair-extensioned--" Kate sputtered out and sighed. "It was fun. For one night. With a badge in my bra instead of a bag of cocaine like half of them. But I wouldn't want to live like that. No. Lanie, I don't need Mr. One-Night-Stand."

"You do have that morality thing."

"It's not the morality. It's the effort; you get to know someone, you might get to like them...they leave. He's not a good bet."

"I hear you. I really do, and I don't know why I don't agree. Once or twice I've seen something in his face --"

"Richard Castle has NO secret sorrow," Kate said, closing the matter. "No one has ever broken his heart. And the way he twinkles and dances away, no one ever will."

"How do you know? It's not like you to be so judgmental. Hell, two divorces – something bad happened to him."

"Or to his wives."

"Now you're just being mean."

"I'm being practical." Kate sank her teeth into the orange slice, looked scornfully at the cherry, and set it aside. "Now, Lanie, in the name of Bechdel's Law, tell me what your mom is up to these days...."